I finally beat DQVIII. 130 hours... i mean DAMN....

My first FFXII file has about 104 hours but a good chunk of that is mark hunting, which I found more tedious than the level grinding at the end of DQVIII, although I wasn't really grinding, I was gaining EXP while waiting for my alchemy recipes to finish. XII I had to do a considerable amount of gil grinding to get the equipment as I went along, although that's probably not necessary to finish the scenarios.

Music-wise DQ was breathtaking up to the end, whereas I got pretty bored with XII's music about the time I got to Raithwall's tomb (hell, maybe even Barheim).

I've always considered the 2 most important aspects of RPGs to be story & gameplay. Story I think I would have to say they're about even, XII is a great story from the ivalice world, it's huge and it's very well done. like most have already said, DQVIII is the traditional RPG perfected, and I think it did an amazing job with that.

But gameplay is where FFXII just smashes DQVIII. I have to say I continually kept getting better with gambits both times I played XII, always trying out new things, and probably still will next time I play it. I developed my characters completely different my second time, whereas I'd imagine maintaining pretty much the similar strategy for DQ. Although it has a really good development system, it's not great.

But I still give the slight nod to Dragon Quest. Apart from its great scenario, almost the only other thing to do is Mark Hunting, which is basically the same exact concept repeated over and over an excessive amount of times. Each hunt gives you a little more info on Ivalice but to me they could have spent that time doing something else which would have made the game better. Dragon Quest has so much to explore and it's world design is beyond words, whereas Final Fantasy was very limited.

While they both live up well to the standards of what is already considered the 2 best series in RPGs, I think Dragon Quest VIII is a more complete and better RPG.